Supersized workers

🦄Wondrous Creatures have gotten a bunch of positive buzz, and I can see why. It has a mild Everdell vibe, and not just because of the cutesy animal theme and the colorful critters. 🙃 The gameplay also has a similar flow, as you do worker placement to gather resources or play cards that make up your tableau. Wondrous Creatures is its own thing though of course, so let’s take a closer look! 🕵️

The worker placement has a new novel idea: 💡 You use these big critter meeples (which are funnily called “Crew”), placing them on the board which is a hexagonal map depicting an island. Interestingly the meeples take up 2-hex spaces and activate every adjacent habitat - for each habitat you either get the appropriate resource, or a card from the display with the matching habitat. Easy so far!

Additionally, everyone has a Captain meeple that rides one of the critters. These all have asymmetric abilities. There is a bit of a gimmick, as the critter and captain meeples are magnetised - it’s totally unnecessary, but I can’t help but be happy that they made them like that. It’s pleasing how they snap together. 😁

Cards can be played if you can pay their resource cost. As usual with tableau-builders there are all kinds of abilities: instant, multiple-use, ongoing, end-game or a recharge ability. 🧐 As you play you, you want to get cards that have somewhat synergistic abilities, and that also match the public objectives well. There is a big deck of cards, all with unique art and mostly different abilities.

The game has a simple but nice flow: 👉Basically you either play up to 2 cards, claim an objective, or send out a worker. If you already have all 3 workers on the map you can do a Recharge turn, claiming them all back and activating recharge cards. Objectives play a major role in the game - they also serve as a game end trigger.

The main fun comes from tableau-building. Playing out cards with different effects and trying to come up with a good engine is inherently satisfying, at least when the cards are fun. And they are definitely fun here ☺️! We’ll be back with more things to love soon!